Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe eBook

“Little?” cried the young Cossack.
“Why, do you know what our little horses can
do? There are not many armies in Europe that
they have not ridden down, at one time or another.
Why, the church at Tcherkask is hung all round with
Colors we have taken from our enemies. There’s
the Swede—­didn’t Charles XII. get
the worst of it when he came in his big boots after
the Cossack?—­ay, and the Turk, and the Austrian,
and the French? Ah! doesn’t my Grandfather
tell how he rode his good little horse all the way
from the Volga to the Seine, and the good Czar Alexander
himself gave him the medal with “Not unto us,
but unto Thy Name be the praise’? Our
father the Czar does not think so little of us and
our horses as you do, young lady.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Lucy; “I
did not know what your horses could do.”

“Oh, you did not! That is some excuse
for you. I’ll show you.”

And in one moment he was on the back of his little
horse, leaning down on its neck, and galloping off
over the green plain like the wind; but it seemed
to Lucy as if she had only just watched him out of
sight on one side before he was close to her on the
other, having whirled round and cantered close up
to her while she was looking the other way.
“Come up with me,” he said; and in one
moment she had been swept up before him on the little
horse’s neck, and was flying so wildly over
the Steppes that her breath and sense failed her,
and she knew no more till she was safe by Mrs. Bunker’s
fireside again.

CHAPTER XIII. SPAIN.

“Suppose now I go to sleep again; what should
I like to see next? A sunny place, I think, where
there is sea to look at. Shall it be Spain,
and shall it be among the poor people? Well,
I think I should be where there is a little lady girl.
I hope they are not all as lazy and conceited as
the Chinese and the Turk.”

So Lucy awoke in a large, cool room with a marble
floor and heavy curtains, but with little furniture
except one table, and a row of chairs ranged along
the wall. It had two windows, one looking out
into a garden,—­such a garden!—­orange-trees
with shining leaves and green and golden fruit and
white flowers, and jasmines, and great lilies standing
round about a marble court. In the midst of
this court was a basin of red marble, where a fountain
was playing, making a delicious splashing; and out
beyond these sparkled in the sun the loveliest and
most delicious of blue seas—­the same blue
sea, indeed, that Lucy had seen in her Italian visit.

That window was empty; but the other, which looked
out into the street, had cushions laid on the sill,
an open-work stone ledge beyond, and little looking-glasses
on either side. Leaning over this sill there
was seated a little maiden in a white frock, but with
a black lace veil fastened by a rose into her jet-black
hair, and the daintiest, prettiest-shaped little feet
imaginable in white satin shoes, which could be plainly
seen as she knelt on the window-seat.